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Re: 2012-2013 Butler Basketball

It's hard for me not to think the A-10 should get full BCS conference level appreciation from the selection committee this season. Outside of the B1G and the Big East is there a league out there that is clearly better overall than the A-10? Maybe the Big 12? Kansas is elite and K-State is petty good. Maybe the ACC? It gets pretty bare after Duke and NC State. The SEC is way down right now outside of Florida and Missouri. The Pac-12 has Arizona, which seems like mostly smoke and mirrors to me, Oregon who is alright, and UCLA who is certainly trending up. Is it better? It seems like after the top tier of the B1G and Big East, the A-10 is right there.

Butler is in the midst of a pretty brutal 7 game stretch to open conference play. I'd be lying if I said I thought they'd get through road games at St. Joe's and Dayton unscathed. (Seriously, why haven't Dayton and Butler played every year regardless of conference affiliation? It seems like such a natural matchup for a variety of reasons.) They should get a win this at home with a middling Richmond team but playing without Clarke could make it tougher than it should be as well as the very real possibility that they're looking ahead to College Gameday and Gonzaga. And huge kudos to Mark Few and Brad Stevens for signing up for such a game in the middle of January. Following that up with a trip to LaSalle, home against Temple, and at St. Louis is pretty ridiculous. If they could go 3-2 in the next 5 games and be 5-2 over this 7 game stretch, I'd be very impressed. They get a bit of a reprieve in February so there seems to be a pretty good shot that they get to March as the favorite to win the regular season conference title and that ought to put them squarely in the mix for a 2-3 seed in my opinion.

While the winner of the Butler/Gonzaga game may have the inside track at this point for a 2 seed, the game which really may place a winner on that line is Butler @ VCU on March 2nd. VCU is playing great baskeball right now and has a relatively easy conference schedule before a pretty ferocious 5 game stretch to end the year. If both teams come into that game with 4 or fewer losses, which seems very possible, the winner should get at least a 3 seed.

You forgot about the MWC, the 3rd best conference in the nation this year. I would say the A-10 is in the 3rd tier with Pac-12, SEC, ACC, and Big 12.

Re: 2012-2013 Butler Basketball

No, none of those... Keep trying..... But I do believe in the Curse of the General. IU will too have years and years go by with breakdowns and key losses......

Does the "Curse of the General" include his own last 13 seasons at IU when he didn't win squat and only went to one Final Four? Seems to me like he was cursing Indiana with his underwhelming success at the end of his tenure when IU lost in the first round in four of his last six seasons. He didn't make a single Sweet 16 in his last six seasons at IU. By the end of his tenure in Bloomington, he was nothing but an arrogant, entitled, average basketball coach. The game passed him by.